Part of my work when I was a graduate research assistant in MSVU university was to transcribe audio interviews. A single one hour interview would take me hours and hours of work to transcribe. Manual transcription is a laborious time-consuming task which is why AI transcription services such as the one listed below are god-sends.

Instead of hours, your transcription is ready within minutes saving you so much time and financial resources. AI transcription services are useful for so many applications such as transcription of video lectures, conferences, and meetings, etc. 



Besides quick transcription of audio content, these services also enable you to quickly search through text transcripts to locate specific information and allow for powerful data analysis.

With the being said, AI transcription still faces a number of challenges including the problem of accuracy. Now matter how sophisticated an AI tool is, a certain percentage of transcriptions will still be riddled with errors and require human intervention to make corrections. 

Things such as background noise, speakers talking over each other, heavy accents and other complexities can all cause inaccuracies in transcription. However, given the advantages of AI transcription tools, they are still a great resource for both individuals and team .

Using AI transcription services in education

For us in education, AI transcription can help a great deal. For instance, teachers and students can use AI transcription tools to transcribe video lectures and other audio/video recordings quickly and accurately. They can also utilize them to search for and find specific information without having to manually search through hours of recordings.

AI transcription tools are also invaluable for creating accessible materials for learners who are deaf or have auditory problems. Transcripts can be used to produce audio formats of content (e.g., web pages, documents, PDFs, books, etc) and make it accessible to students with different learning styles.

Language learners will also benefit from AI transcription tools, as they can use transcripts to practice their pronunciation and comprehension as well as focus on specific language items by searching for keywords.

Researchers, especially qualitative researchers, will also benefit greatly from AI transcription tools. By transcribing audio recordings they can quickly and accurately analyze their data and draw conclusions from it more effectively saving time and money.


For more educational AI resources, check out these posts:

Best AI text to video generatorsBest AI text to image generatorsBest AI text to drawing generatorsBest AI voice generatorsBest AI translation tools Best AI text writersBest AI Content DetectorsBest AI music generatorsBest Photo to cartoon toolsBest AI face generatorsBest AI presentation makers

In this post, I compiled a list of some of the best AI transcription softwares that can help you with your transcription work. Whether you are a teacher, educator, researcher, student, or anyone else looking for reliable services to help you with your transcription, the AI-powered transcription tools below the perfect fit.

1. Rev

Rev is an AI-powered speech recognition platform that helps users transcribe audio and video recordings quickly. Compared with other audio transcription softwares, Rev boasts an accuracy rate that is around 90% making it one of the best transcription tool out there.

Rev also provides an online editor where you can correct, highlight or delete passages. Additionally, Rev provides search functionality to help you locate any word or phrase from across saved transcripts. Multi-user access and sharing options are also supported.

Besides automated transcription, You can also hire human transcriptionists for an additional cost. Rev offers a free trial where you can get your first 3 minutes of transcription for free.

2. Otter

Otter is another great AI transcription software to consider. I have been using their service for some time now and I love it. Otter is an AI powered transcription software that records audio, writes notes, automatically captures slides, and generates summaries.


It is designed to make it easier to collaborate with teammates in the live transcript, by adding comments, highlighting key points, and assigning action items. Otter also captures and inserts slides into the meeting notes so you can easily recall and share key information. 

Plus, it generates summaries after meetings that are emailed to all attendees, allowing them to quickly and easily recall key information. It is an excellent choice for teachers and students, providing real time captions and notes for in-person and virtual lectures, classes or meetings.

3. Sonix

Sonix is an AI-powered platform that provides highly accurate, automated transcription in dozens of languages, dialects, and accents. It also features an in-browser transcript editor to polish the transcript, as well as word-by-word timestamps and speaker labeling. 


Automated diarization and text/subtitle exports (DOCX, TXT, PDF) are also available. If you already have a transcript, upload it together with its media and let Sonix stitch them together for you.

Sonix also offers a custom dictionary feature, automated timecode realignment, and the ability to upload multiple tracks and Sonix will combine them into one transcript with the speakers automatically labeled. . All of this makes Sonix a powerful and reliable alternative for Otter and Rev.

4. MeetGeek

MeetGeek is an AI meeting assistant that helps teams stay in sync and capture the most important moments of their meetings. It video records, transcribes, summarizes, and provides key insights from every meeting. MeetGeek also stores all meeting notes in a single, searchable, secure location.

MeetGeek helps teams repurpose knowledge stored in conversations to create powerful and impactful stories that can be shared with others. Teams can also go back in time and recall any detail from past meeting transcripts using an easy keyword search.

MeetGeek works with Zoom, Teams, andGoogle Meet allowing you to store your meetings in a single place as well as generate transcripts from the uploaded audio files.

5. Fireflies

Fireflies.ai is another AI-powered transcription service that helps teams record, transcribe, search, and analyze conversations with ease. By integrating with popular video-conferencing apps and audio files, Fireflies captures video + audio and generates transcripts in minutes.

With AI-powered search, users can quickly review a 1 hour meeting in just 5 minutes. Users can further collaborate with their team by adding comments, pins, and reactions to specific parts of conversations, creating soundbites, and  tsharing meeting notes to their favorite collaboration apps.

Fireflies also provides users with an AI meeting summary so they can recieve paraphrased summaries of their meetings. Overall, Fireflies.ai is a powerful tool to help teams save time and get the most out of their conversations.

6. Beey

Beey is an innovative platform that allows users to convert their videos, podcasts, meeting minutes, interviews and more into text with higher accuracy. With its intuitive editing interface, users can quickly and easily correct any errors in their transcripts. 


In addition, they can take advantage of the professional Subtitle Mode to create captions and subtitles with the highest accuracy. The built-in automatic translation feature allows users to instantly translate their recordings into 20 different languages and make their content accessible to a wider audience.

Beey offers many other features such as speaker separation, speaker recognition, voice recording, livestream transcription, interactive subtitle editor and machine translation. This platform is the perfect solution for those who need to make a fully searchable archive of their audio and video resources. With Beey, users can easily access, store and manage audio and video files in one place.

7. Verbit

Verbit is an automated audio and video transcription technology that helps professionals easily convert their recordings into customized text. It offers professional-grade accuracy along with built-in features for formatting according to logic rules and ADA standards.

Verbit also seamlessly integrates with popular conferencing and streaming platforms like Zoom, Twitch, YouTube, Dropbox & Drive for live captioning and closed captions on videos. In addition, users can add transcript translations into multiple languages as well as search through the transcripts using keywords—all from a single platform.

8. Speak

Speak is a powerful platform for automated audio and video transcription, analysis and data capture. It enables users to individually or in bulk upload audio, video and text data into the platform. 


The speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) engine automatically transcribes and analyzes the audio, video and text data to uncover important keywords, topics, key phrases, sentiment analysis and more.

Speak also gives users the flexibility to build custom embeddable audio and video recorders, record directly in-app or easily upload locally stored files. The tool supports multiple integrations like Zapier, Google Chrome Extension, Zoom integration, Vimeo integration and others to automate the workflow. 


With Speak, users can easily transcribe YouTube videos, podcasts, save captured media to Google Drive, analyze RSS feeds and more.
This post originally appeared in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning ( www.educatorstechnology.com ).